Wanted to highlight a super exclusive story I have up over at The Daily Beast, about U.S. political consultants, along with other Western campaign firms, jumping into the Iraqi election for the first time. International political consulting is a $1 billion a year market, and Iraq provides a new and possibly lucrative frontier.

Also a bit of breaking news to go along with it. Twenty of the candidates on the Ahrar list–a moderate, secular, anti-Iranian party–just found out today that they’ve been barred from running for office. Iraqracy lives on!